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Symphony No 7 in A major, Op 92

Introduction

Beethoven’s Symphony No 7 was completed in 1812 and dedicated to Landgrave Moritz von Fries. This fragment – all that he managed of his only attempt at a solo piano transcription of one of his own symphonies – was undertaken by early 1815, probably in response to Diabelli’s wish to publish such an arrangement, and was published in facsimile under the present title by Willy Hess in his supplement to the Breitkopf edition of Beethoven’s complete works. It is included here for several reasons: its intrinsic interest; because it is not otherwise recorded; as a testament to Beethoven’s approval of such arrangements in general; and because the juxtaposition of Beethoven’s fragment with Liszt’s first transcription of the same material also convinces the listener of Liszt’s particular genius in the field as well as his superior fidelity to Beethoven in the text itself. Beethoven’s fascinating attempt breaks off towards the end of the Poco sostenuto. (Diabelli took over the task himself and made the first published solo piano transcription of the whole symphony, which was published in England in 1816 – as Beethoven’s Opus 98! Czerny also made an approved piano transcription, but in a version for four hands.)

Recordings

'Hyperion's set is that early evening Beethoven cycle caught in recordings of remarkable intimacy and focus … it is a set I would happily put int ...'So magnificently exhilharating an account' (BBC Music Magazine)» More

Beethoven was rarely explicit about any meaning behind his works. However it is impossible to listen to his Symphony No 7 without being captivated by a sense of euphoria, tainted only by what is possibly the most profound slow movement he was to w ...» More

'One can only marvel at Leslie Howard's tireless advocacy of Liszt, and the way he constantly overcomes the multitude of technical obstacles in his pa ...'This early Beethoven collection finds Howard on top form. The notes which [he] writes to accompany each issue are erudite, witty, totally enthralling ...» More

Leslie Howard’s recordings of Liszt’s complete piano music, on 99 CDs, is one of the monumental achievements in the history of recorded music. Remarkable as much for its musicological research and scholarly rigour as for Howard’s Herculean piano p ...» More

Details

The seventh and eighth symphonies were composed in rapid succession, between October 1811 and October 1812, and the two seem to be if not siblings, then at least first cousins. One feature they share is the absence of a genuine slow movement. In the eighth symphony, the second movement is an Allegretto with a strong scherzo element. It is followed not by an actual scherzo, which in the context would have been superfluous, but by an elegant and old-fashioned minuet—the only such piece in Beethoven’s symphonies. In the Symphony No 7 the exchange of roles between the two middle movements is rather more involved. The second movement is again an Allegretto, but one that is unexpectedly written in the symphony’s home tonality—albeit in the minor, rather than the major. The scherzo, in its turn, appropriates the key we might well have expected for the slow movement of a work actually in A minor. The scherzo is, in fact, in F major—the only instance in Beethoven’s symphonies of a piece of its kind that is not in the work’s main key.

Perhaps it was the lack of a later slow movement that led Beethoven to begin the work with the longest of all his symphonic slow introductions. The introduction itself contains two fully developed ideas, the first of them punctuated by rising staccato scales whose pulsating rhythm is to provide the generating force for what is one of the most rhythmically motivated of all Beethoven’s works; and the second being a lyrical theme played by oboe, and later flute. The following Vivace, on the other hand, is dominated throughout by a single sharply defined rhythmic figure. Its climax is reached in the coda, where a winding chromatic phrase is repeated over and over again by the lower strings, while above it the remainder of the orchestra gradually accumulates a crescendo of shattering power.

The famous second movement is a piece with a curiously ‘closed’ feel. Not only does it begin and end with the same sustained woodwind chord gradually dying away, but the variations that form its core unfold by a process of superimposition, with the ‘fatalistic’ rhythm of the theme itself running inexorably through all the accumulated layers. Even the contrasting episode in the major is underpinned by the same rhythmic figure in the basses, and only a hushed fugato passage following the return to the minor creates the sense of a more open design.

The third movement is one of Beethoven’s expanded scherzo designs, with two appearances of the slower trio, and a coda in which the trio’s material makes a brief return before being cut off by an abrupt conclusion in the scherzo’s tempo. As for the finale, it is carried irresistibly forwards by its swirling phrases, whose cumulative energy is unsurpassed by any of Beethoven’s other symphonic finales. Its structure is based on a deliberate deception. The regular cut of the themes—complete with internal repeats—lends them an unmistakably rondo-like aspect; but the movement turns out to be a fully developed sonata form instead. Mozart had written similarly ambiguous finales on occasion—not least, in his G minor Symphony No 40—but Beethoven carries the procedure further, and incorporates rondo-like episodes into his development section, too.